Taxpayers foot R118 million bill for suspended civil servants

Cape Town - Taxpayers have paid a whopping R118 008 977 for the salaries of 498 civil servants who were on precautionary suspensions over the past five years.

The officials were suspended for a combined 63 688 days, and at least 291 have had their disciplinary cases finalised, with 207 not completed during the period.

This was revealed by Public Service and Administration Minister Mzamo Buthelezi, when he was responding to parliamentary questions from DA MP, Leah Potgieter.

Buthelezi’s written response showed that a total of 345 civil servants were suspended by national government departments and 153 others by provincial departments.

A breakdown of the suspensions are as follows:

• National department suspended 498 officials and paid R55 029 942;
• Eastern Cape suspended 30 at a cost of R10 510 887;
• Gauteng suspended eight and paid R5 406 497 in salaries;
• KwaZulu-Natal’s suspension of 67 officials came at a cost of R40 990 922;
• Limpopo suspended two and paid R285 887;
• Mpumalanga’s six officials cost R429 656;
• North West suspended four officials at a cost of R 1 111 871;
• Northern Cape’s six suspended officials to the tune of R519 569, and
• Western Cape suspended 30 and paid salaries at R 3 719 746.

Buthelezi’s response indicated that the department with the highest number of suspensions was the Department of Correctional Services with 260, followed by SAPS with 54, and Justice and Constitutional Development with eight.

In the provinces, KwaZulu-Natal’s Health Department had a total of 58 suspensions, followed by the Eastern Cape Education Department with 22, and the Health and Wellness Department in the Western Cape with 17.

Buthelezi noted that in terms of the data sourced from PERSAL, most departments were succeeding in addressing misconduct, but the Eastern Cape Education Department had managed to deal with 9% of their misconduct cases.

“While the DPSA (Department of Public Service and Administration) has issued several templates for how discipline management information is to be recorded, these are not used consistently, and many departments defer to their internal forms and processes.

“The capturing of all suspensions on PERSAL is not done in a timely manner and much of the information is recorded manually that leaves room for human error in the calculation of time and costs for each case.”

Buthelezi said his department drafted a discipline management strategy in 2023 to support departments to complete discipline-related cases within stipulated timeframes.

“A backlog project on suspensions was launched in December 2023 and is continuing during the current financial year.”

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